Thor's TV History

From fighting the Hulk in live-action to meeting up with Spider-Man's amazing friends, we look back at the God of Thunder on the small screen.

By Eric Goldman

With Thor: The Dark World hitting theaters this week, we're taking an updated look at the history of the Mighty Avenger on TV.

While Thor only came to movie screens for the first time in 2011, the Marvel Comics version of the God of Thunder has a long history on TV. There have been several animated versions of Thor – and one rather infamous live-action version, which found him taking on none other than the Incredible Hulk.

Keep in mind this list is focused on television appearances, not the feature films or direct-to-video projects.

Thor's first TV appearance came in 1966, in this animated series focused on a rotating cast of characters, including Iron Man, Captain America, Sub-Mariner and the Hulk. This oft-mocked series was oh-so loosely "animated," as it simply took comic book panels and crudely added movement in an awkward, poorly-conceived manner.

It's not shocking, given the created-for-the-comics source material, but the episodes were at least directly adapted from the early Thor comic book stories, including villains like Loki, the Enchantress, Absorbing Man, Mister Hyde and the Destroyer. Check out the opening theme below:

After sitting out the '70s, Thor made his return to TV in the early '80s via appearances on two animated series focused on Spider-Man. The first was a cameo aimed at Marvel comic book fans in the 1981 solo Spider-Man animated series, where the guest starring Sub-Mariner rushes his injured cousin Namorita to a hospital where she is helped by none other than Thor's alter-ego, Dr. Donald Blake. Blake only has a couple of lines of dialogue, but Namorita praises "this handsome doctor."

However, the God of Thunder would get a much bigger spotlight in the Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends episode, "Vengeance of Loki" (coincidentally also a Marvel Super Heroes Thor episode title). This episode saw Thor and the "Spider-Friends" teaming up against the god of thunder's evil brother Loki, who has managed to transform himself so that he appears to be Thor himself. Though the wackiest part of this story involved Iceman having a bizarre love story of sorts with a towering Frost Giant woman, here called "Ice Giants."

Ah, here we go. The most famous and infamous of Thor's TV appearances and the only time for decades, until the Thor feature film and now The Avengers, that the character ever appeared in live action. The Incredible Hulk Returns was the first of three TV movie reunions for The Incredible Hulk TV series, starring Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno. While the Hulk TV show rarely had any other super-powered characters, much less any Marvel-specific characters, the TV movies were seen as potential launching pads for new Marvel-based shows, and Thor was chosen as the first character to get a big guest starring spotlight.

The only trouble was, The Incredible Hulk Returns was pretty awful. It lacked any of the pathos and drama The Incredible Hulk series had in its best episodes, and its portrayal of Thor was incredibly off from the comics. Let's forgive the fact that, like the Hulk, he's far less powerful than the comics, given the fact that the budget simply wouldn't allow for him to do what he does in the comics. Played by Eric Allan Kramer (who at least seems to be having fun), he's a boisterous bruiser who loved to drink and fight, and seemed more like Marvel's version of Hercules than Thor.

Comic book alter ego Don Blake was used, but in a completely different manner from the source material, where Blake (here a decidedly dorky former student of David Banner's) can summon Thor before him, rather than turning into him – by holding Thor's hammer and yelling, "Odin!" Oh, and apparently Thor is dead, since we see his skeleton when Blake finds his hammer and he laments his dead friends at one point. He's also not the brightest guy, who upon being summoned immediately screams for a drink while ripping apart important scientific equipment (apparently believing it's a refrigerator?) while bellowing, "Is there nothing to drink in this alchemist's den?" But hey, if you've wanted to see a scene in which Thor goes to a biker/honkytonk bar and dances, drinks and arm wrestles to crappy music, this is the TV movie for you! But what Marvel fans had really been wanting to see was Hulk fight Thor, and we got it! Well, we got this...

I was rather delighted to find that someone had actually made an Incredible Hulk Returns Thor action figure using WWE toys – and it's really well done!